Juan
Active member
The Matienzo Caves Project has lost a pioneering figure with the death of Geoff Yeadon on March 29th, 2026. While he was well known in British caving circles for his record-breaking dives in the Yorkshire Dales - most famously the 1979 traverse of Keld Head immortalised in the television documentary The Underground Eiger - it is his earlier work in the caves around Matienzo that deserve special mention here.
Geoff first arrived in Matienzo in July 1974, having cycled down through France with his brother John. It was the kind of low-key, adventurous entrance that suited the man. Over the years that followed - 1974, 1975, and 1977 - he contributed to the surveying of a number of open and going caves in the area, helping to set the standard for the the painstaking work that the project has built on since. But it is his diving that is most recognised in Matienzo's story.
His first significant dive here was in the large resurgence sump pool of La Cuevona, where he pushed through 87 metres of flooded passage to emerge in the downstream tunnel of Cueva Molino - a breakthrough that completed work started by a Spanish diver. Working frequently alongside his diving companion Stuart Davey, he went on to investigate Peter Plummet and then completed a dive through the main resurgence at San Miguel de Aras, discovering around half a kilometre of open passage beyond - some of it accessible only with the use of scaling poles. This was inspiring work at the time - committed and improvisational cave exploration.
Perhaps his most consequential Matienzo dive was the upstream push in Cueva-Cubío de la Reñada, where he passed through 30 metres of flooded tunnel to emerge in what would become known as Reñada 2 - a full kilometre of streamway and fossil passages that added to the knowledge of the system's upstream extent. His final dive of 1977, an upstream push in Cueva Llueva, ended with a characteristically understated but tantalising note in the log: the route, he reported, was still going.
He came by bicycle, he dived with courage and skill, and he left the cave systems larger and better understood than he found them.
RIP Geoff Yeadon.
Geoff first arrived in Matienzo in July 1974, having cycled down through France with his brother John. It was the kind of low-key, adventurous entrance that suited the man. Over the years that followed - 1974, 1975, and 1977 - he contributed to the surveying of a number of open and going caves in the area, helping to set the standard for the the painstaking work that the project has built on since. But it is his diving that is most recognised in Matienzo's story.
His first significant dive here was in the large resurgence sump pool of La Cuevona, where he pushed through 87 metres of flooded passage to emerge in the downstream tunnel of Cueva Molino - a breakthrough that completed work started by a Spanish diver. Working frequently alongside his diving companion Stuart Davey, he went on to investigate Peter Plummet and then completed a dive through the main resurgence at San Miguel de Aras, discovering around half a kilometre of open passage beyond - some of it accessible only with the use of scaling poles. This was inspiring work at the time - committed and improvisational cave exploration.
Perhaps his most consequential Matienzo dive was the upstream push in Cueva-Cubío de la Reñada, where he passed through 30 metres of flooded tunnel to emerge in what would become known as Reñada 2 - a full kilometre of streamway and fossil passages that added to the knowledge of the system's upstream extent. His final dive of 1977, an upstream push in Cueva Llueva, ended with a characteristically understated but tantalising note in the log: the route, he reported, was still going.
He came by bicycle, he dived with courage and skill, and he left the cave systems larger and better understood than he found them.
RIP Geoff Yeadon.
